J.

RATATATTAT.

  Veda shoved the cassette back in the envelope as Jazey Joskin's voice filtered through the fake oak panelling "Veda, my dear, it's only your Jazey."

  "Just a minute!" She hid the envelope in the bedside drawer. "Hello." The solicitor breathed an acceptable port in her face as he stumbled into the room, a bundle of papers and a bottle of wine pressed to his chest.

  "I've brought a nice claret," he said, "For us to share. I borrowed a corkscrew from old Jambres." And he hunted around for suitable vessels. "I meant to ask if you wanted to visit Jervaulx this weekend. You will learn a great deal more about our movement and its objectives if you were to accompany us to the Jamboree. Jambres, Jerboa and myself would be honoured to take you." He sipped the claret and smacked his lips with the satisfaction of a man who has spent his money wisely. "Now let's have some initiation."

  Forty-two seconds later, Veda found herself lashed naked to the wash basin with Jazey Joskin's powdered wig on her head. Behind her, the solicitor, dressed in Veda's knickers and bra, lashed her buttocks with a firm, stiff leek.

  JASOn, she learned between grunts and thwacks, was dedicated to toppling the House of Windsor and their Germanic relatives from the English throne and preparing for the return of the rightful monarch, the descendent of James II.

  James Stuart, 1623-1701, king of England and Ireland and, as James VII, of Scotland (1685-88); son of Charles I. Pro-Catholic sympathies and a desire to encourage tolerance of Non-Conformist groups such as the Quakers and Dissenters led to a Protestant coalition of Whigs and Tories inviting the Dutch William Duke of Orange to invade their country and depose their king. James attempted to regain the throne in 1690 via Ireland and was defeated at the Battle of the Boyne. His deposition led to the establishment of the current German dynasty.

  JASOn rejected all things to do with the usurping dynasty including their coinage and used the old jacobus and various precious stones. The identity of the sovereign-in-waiting was a closely guarded secret. The network communicated through music, theatre, literature, films, appropriating the cultural forms of the Establishment for its own purposes. The movement's symbol was the Jay Bird.

  "Giles Jankyn...," Veda panted, "... pre-dates..." Her buttocks tingled. "...the collapse of the Stuarts..." She jerked against the restraints. "... by nearly a hundred years." The leek thrashed her again.

  "Unhh," grunted Joskin, adjusting the bra strap. "The Jacobites hi-jacked JASOn."

  THWACK.

  JASOn had originated in Renaissance England as an underground resistance to the Reformation of the Church. It had opposed the incursion of both Lutheran and Henrician Protestantism and had jealously guarded the Roman traditions. Some of its illicit activities included the burning of incense in Anglican churches, the naming of children with Italianate names and the debasement of English culture through a vigorous occupation of the emergent English theatre. Through this channel, Machiavellian anti-heroes of Italian and Spanish origin were held up as figures of stature, high achievers and men of courage slaughtering milksop effeminate English types on their way to success. Moreover, good English women could be defiled on the stage, audiences drawn from church into playhouses, brothels and bear-pits, boys dressed as women and thus denatured - the list of possibilities was seemingly endless. The Puritan Protestants, closing the theatres in 1642, labelled them "immoral and seditious". The prominent JASOn official Giles Jankyn, then Hon. Bedekeeper, had his work destroyed and his name erased from history by the usurping Hanoverians and their successors. The Earl of Jedburgh, the Jigsaw Maker, and Tom Tages, the Tarboy, both vanished in 1620.

  Today, JASOn has lost much of its religious thrust. Its members include Protestants, Jews and Buddhists because its guiding principles are Virtue and Justice. It seeks to fight cultural iconoclasm, barbarism and intolerance.

  "But why," gasped Veda, "Was the Reformation so threatening?"

  Jazey placed the claret bottle and the leek at the foot of the bed and gathered the sheepskin rug from the floor. "Because of the Consistory," he said.

  The Consistory had held Calvin's Geneva in a grip of iron. Five pastors and twelve lay elders acted as a kind of city council between 1509 and 1564. The list of outlawed activities was long and chillingly impressive.

  "When the Papists are so harsh and violent in defence of their superstitions," said Calvin, "Are not Christ's magistrates shamed to show themselves less ardent in defence of Truth?" One such instance of the Consistory's defence of the Truth involved the four day imprisonment of-

  1) a woman for having her hair at an "immodest" length

  and

  2) a father for insisting on naming his son Claude

  whilst the beneficent pastors supervised the beheading of a child who had struck his father for sexually molesting him, an activity itself curiously omitted from the Puritans' list.

  Jazey secured the stumps of the sheepskin rug with a neat bow under her breasts and lashed his buttocks with the leek.

  Activities and items outlawed by the Geneva Consistory.

  Feasting,

  dancing,

  singing,

  pictures,

  statues,

  relics,

  church bells,

  organs (both kinds),

  altar candles,

  indecent and/or irreligious songs,

  staging and/or attending theatrical plays,

  the wearing of make-up,

  jewellery,

  lace and/or immodest dress,

  speaking disrespectfully of your betters,

  extravagant entertainment,

  swearing,

  gambling,

  playing cards,

  hunting,

  drunkenness,

  naming children after anyone but figures from the Old Testament,

  reading immoral and/or irreligious books,

  masturbation,

  and sexual intercourse (except within marriage and then not on Sundays, holy and/or feast days, Wednesdays, Fridays, during Lent, Advent or Christmas, and/or during menstruation)

  "In other words," gasped Jazey, "Everything that make life fun and worthwhile." He beat himself again. "Imagine living without the things on that list. It would be intolerable."

  "So Jankyn and Jedburgh started JASOn," said Veda.

  "No," said Jazey. "They inherited it. JASOn was started by a Pope. The rump of the original movement." The leek made an original movement over her rump.

  THWACK.

  Veda jerked against her bonds.

  Jazey dribbled.

  "Oh, you naughty sheep," he moaned. "Master Peter says ‘Can I come to play?’"

  Veda lowered her head. The leek smacked down. The indignities suffered at the hands of the law. Were they worth what she'd learned?

  THWACK

  THWACK

  Outside the room, Jerboa, on his way to bed, trilled:

  cur

  rrrrrryyy

  sive

  Reee

  number theo

  shows for example thaaaaaaaaat

 

  THWACK.

  She was sweating heavily inside the itchy sheepskin rug. "Don't be sheepish!" He smacked her bottom smartly with the leek.

  THWACK.

  "You naughty sheep," moaned Jazey. "You naughty, naughty sheep."

  THWACK.

  "Oh bugger," he muttered, "The leek's snapped. We really need a tarboy right now. Still, I think we're ready, Master Peter's so swollen, he's ready to slip inside, so, you naughty, sexy sheep...." He stroked the rug, then bleated at the top of his voice

  BAAAAA!

  and, with another cry of "naughty sheep", he entered her from behind.